The zip contents are pre-built and ready-to-run. Simply extract the contents of the Orchard
folder from the zip contents to an IIS virtual directory (or site root) and then point your
browser to the site. You can also just extract to a local folder and open the Orchard
folder in Visual Studio or WebMatrix as a web site (but not as a web application).
Please make sure you have a machine key
http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Setting-up-a-machine-key
or you may experience frequent disconnections.

What file to download?

If you just want to use Orchard and don't care about the source code, Orchard.Web.1.8.zip
is what you want to use, preferably through the WebPI instructions.
Do not attempt to build the WebPI version in VS. Use the full source if you want to use VS.

If you want to take a look at the source code or want to be able to build the application in Visual Studio,
Orchard.Source.1.8.zip is fine.

The messaging infrastructure has been deprecated and replaced by a simpler one. As part of this change you can now define the email templates directly in shapes.

The SMTP settings are read from the web.config file by default if available.

Azure Media Services has been contributed by Microsoft Open Technologies and provides a seamless integration with the Media module

Orchard.Azure.MediaServices

Orchard.Azure:

PlatformConfiguration (static class to read settings from CloudConfigurationManager) is gone. Its place is taken by an injectable dependency called IPlatformConfigurationAccessor and the old implementation's logic is moved to the DefaultPlatformConfigurationAccessor class, which was then extended to look for settings among the ConnectionStrings too.

These changes are reflected throughout the Orchard.Azure module, though the Azure database cache's behavior (AzureCache* classes) is not affected by IPlatformConfigurationAccessor implementations other than DefaultPlatformConfigurationAccessor due to certain NHibernate limitations.

Added a new setting called Orchard.Azure.Media.StoragePublicHostName which makes it possible to override the public host name when using Azure storage.

Orchard.Azure.Media and Orchard.Azure.DatabaseCache now depend on Orchard.Azure.

Upgrading from Orchard 1.7.2

You will need an account with the Site Owner permission before you update your website with the new release. Without this step you won't be able to access the dashboard.

In case you are discovering this notice too late, here is the manual operation to apply. In your database table Orchard_Framework_ContentItemRecord, on the record with id=1 (the site content item), update the value with this content <Data><SiteSettingsPart SuperUser="admin"/></Data>

Enable the Upgrade module

Migrating Email activities

In Orchard 1.8 the Send Email workflow activity has been replaced by a new one which is able to send emails asynchronously using the Jobs Queue.

Click on Upgrade To 1.8 from the menu

Select the Messaging tab and click Migrate

Migrating Infoset

In Orchard 1.8 a new data storage technique is introduced saving some of the content in the infoset document of content items instead of records. This way some records are obsolete and can be deleted. The data it contained needs to be migrated though.

Click on Upgrade To 1.8 from the menu

Select the Infoset tab and click on all the Migrate buttons one at a time

If you are not sure if one button was clicked you can try again and it will just be ignored if it was already processed.

Contributors

This software would not exist without the community. In particular, for this release,
we should all be grateful to the following people who contributed patches and features: